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BBC Related Utilities/Software

Most files can now be reached via automatically generated indexes. The top level index is here!

This page contains:

  • BBC utilities
  • BBC-related software
  • File transfer software
  • File conversion software
  • Enter the utility archive! [ HTTP | index page ]
    • And there are separate pages for:
  • Emulators
  • BBC file archive (ROMs, games, ...)

    • BBC utilities

     Software which runs on BBC micros.
  • Small-C 0.71 by Ron Cain (original), A.J.Travis (BBC/Master version), J.G.Harston (further tweaks). Small-C is a compiler suite for a subset of the C programming language.
  • DOSFS, Sprow's file system ROM for accessing DOS and Windows 95 diskettes on a BBC, even with long file names.
  • unzip, SPROW's unzip program in BBC BASIC (supports only 'stored' files). [Home]
  • GrabROM 1.3, Richard J Purves' BBC utility for dumping a ROM image to file.
  • BBC Kermit 1.42, the Columbia University distribution of the BBC version of Kermit.
  • HackROM 1.18, James Bonfield and Stephen Youell's remarkable disassembler, disk editor, file and ROM utilities, all in one ROM (the archive contains the sources).
  • HENSA/micros/BBC archive mirror. Various utilities for BBC: 65C02 assembler, Small-C 0.70, Arc/Darc and more.
  • ICODraw by Darren Izzard. View Windows icons on your BBC.
  • SaveROM, a BBC BASIC program for dumping a given ROM to a file.
  • TequilaComm 1.32, old BBC communications program (unregistered)

    • BBC-related software

     Software related to BBC or its architecture, but hosted on other systems.
  • BBC Connect 2.1: Brian Jones' front-end for the BeebEm, PCBBC and ElectrEm emulators. Also interfaces to several software archives on the Internet.
  • BeebEF 2.3, Mark de Weger's Windows front-end for BBC emulators (especially well suited for BeebEm and pcBBC). The database is now saved as XML.
  • 65Link: John Kortink's software to let a BBC use the hard disk of an ARM machine (only RISC OS at the moment though).
  • 6502dis, Wouter Hobers' 6502 disassembler.
  • 6502 lcc ANSI-C compiler (beta 2)
  • BBC2BMP 0.5, a BBC screen dump to BMP converter (by Mark Usher)
  • PPM2BBC, a utility that converts from the generic PPM bitmap format to BBC screen dumps (any mode), by Darren Izzard.
  • PBM2VDU, C code and scripts to convert pictures to BBC MODE 0, 1 or 2 VDU sequences.
  • riproms.c, a C program to rip OS 1.2 and BASIC 2 ROMs out from Acorn's !65Host emulation software. (See the ROM section. riproms-p.c is a fixed version (by some John Doe) which patches the extracted OS ROM so that it works (tested on BeebWin 0.04 and Tom's emulator 0.3).
  • riprom2, another, more general C program by Robert de Bath for ripping out the BBC ROMs. Based on an external patch table file..
  • riproms-Sammy, yet another ROM ripper (C program) by "Sammy", which extracts the files directly from the APP2.ARC archive file!

    • File transfer software

     Programs to transfer files between a BBC micro and other systems, including PC's. The documentation section has a couple of pages on procedures and formats.

    Serial communications

  • William Andrew Steer provides BASIC programs for transferring a disk image from a BBC to a PC.
  • XFer 4.0 for Linux and Win32 is a rewrite of Mark de Weger's classic DOS utility, by Angus Duggan. The original distribution site is here.
  • DT2K: Greg Cook's suite of BASIC programs (including DumpDisc) for transfering a uuencoded disc image through an ASCII serial connection.
  • Wouter Scholten is developing bbccom for Linux - read about it here (dead link).
  • XFer version 3.0, by Mark de Weger: (formerly BBCXFer) transfer files between your BBC and PC over a serial cable, and run BBC commands from the PC ("terminal emulation"). Includes extensive documentation on transferring, file formats and on building a serial cable.

    • Read/write diskettes

  • ARCIMG 1.1.2, Jasper Renow-Clarke's utility (with modifications by Tom Humphrey) to read 800KB and 1.6MB Archimedes disks in PC floppy drives w/sources.
  • FDC originally by John M.B. Wilson: reads BBC diskettes on PCs with old floppy drive controllers. This is the original ftp site. BBC-related questions about FDC should be sent to Wouter Scholten, who has done quite a lot of tailoring on it, including new commands for setting up loads of parameters for reading BBC floppies.
  • Anadisk 2.07, a DOS program for reading alien disk formats. Some people have used it for reading BBC diskettes.
  • BeebDOS 2.02, a suite of programs capable of working with BBC diskettes in DOS (on a PC). Includes conversion utilities and a full manual (thanks to Connor O'Rourke). The suite might require an old floppy controller, like FDC does.
  • BeebDOS 3.00, an update of BeebDOS adding support for converting the CP/M formats from the Torch system. Thanks to Darren Rollason.
  • DOSFS 1.13 by Dimitry Petrov: read DOS 360 or 720 KB floppies on a BBC with sideways RAM and a 1770 disk drive controller.

    • Read/write tapes

  • bbctape et al, Wouter Scholten's tape processing software. Based on the utilities by Ole Stauning and Robert Schmidt, this collection of programs improve on both with several features and improved quality output.
  • BBC Tape Utility 0.9 by Ole Stauning: transfer files directly from BBC tape in Linux, using sound card.
  • BBC-Tape 0.91 beta (for Win32) by Robert Schmidt: transfer files from your BBC tapes to a PC, indirectly using a soundcard (22 kHz or better recording capability recommended).

    • File conversion software

     Programs to convert BBC files between various formats. Note that Tom Seddon's emulator package includes the conversion utilities you need to use BBC software with his emulator. The documentation section has a couple of pages on procedures and formats.
  • OmniDisk: Jason Watton's disk, image and file conversion utility, supporting BBC disks in a PC driver, using familiar '*' commands.
  • bbcim 0.103 for converting between various BBC emulator storage formats, by Wouter Scholten.
  • bbcim 0.8 for converting BBC BASIC files to HTML, by Wouter Scholten.
  • Horizon Converter 1.0, for converting INF files to Horizon format.
  • BBCFiles 0.29 (12 Dec 2001) by James Lampard is a RISC OS utility for converting BBC files between various file/disc image formats.
  • David Boddie offers T2Tools, a collection of BBC/Electron file conversion utilities in the form of Python scripts. Check his home page for the latest and greatest!
  • David Lodge's disc utilities are available under the GPL, and includes Linux binaries.
  • William Andrew Steer provides a utility for extracting files from a BBC disk image.
  • nspark 1.7.7, patched by Mark Usher to allow extraction of *.inf files for use on non-Acorn machines. Useful for making disk images!
  • Tape2Disc, a RISCOS program for decoding Slogger tape images into separate files, by David Boddie. He has a page for it as well.
  • bascat 1.2, a BBC BASIC file viewer for UNIX (more info).
  • BBC Explorer 2.01 [home], a Windows Explorer-like program for manipulating BBC disk images, by Laurie Whiffen.
  • BAS2TXT, a C program to convert tokenized BBC BASIC program files to readable text. Contains DOS and Win32 executables.
  • BEEBARC 0.03a by Darren Salt. Similar to bbcim, but especially for RISC PCs.
  • BBCCONV by Andrew de Quincey. Convertes BASIC files between BBC BASIC and PC BBC BASIC. C source and Intel x86 Win32 executable.
  • stampinf: David Glover's utility for converting archive files (with *.inf) to files usable on an Acorn machine. Updates can be found here.
  • DCONV 2.0, Tom Seddon's DFS to standard archive format converter. Supports Watford DFS images with up to 62 files.
  • dconv for Xbeeb, David Ralph Stacey's DFS image to Xbeeb _CATALOGUE_ format converter.
  • XADFS, Wouter Hobers' utility extracts files from ADFS disk images.

    • Robert Schmidt - rsc@nvg.org.